the writing on the wall

somewhere in the midst of
these hundred summers stitched together,
a memory of rain long forgotten
but now remembered
because of profuse tears
refusing dehydration.

my flag is smeared with blood,
the blood of the blue-blooded
and the blood of the dead.
people watch it fly
through a blue-sky breeze,
above the city, high
and happy like the prince.
but the passing swallows
and the ragged sparrows
know it sighs and cries
in grief kept clandestine
from the well-fed
and the complacent.

alive we are all blue-blooded,
for red harbingers death.
my flag is smeared with the blood
of the living and the honorable dead.
in retrospect i am grateful
for the blue and crimson stains.
i wouldn’t want it all yellow,
its courage never waned.
and an immaculate white would mean
all the bleeding happened in vain.

(actually, i was supposed to write an essay about the two logos above that i made for the "proudly pinoy" logo design contest, but hey, this is my poetry page, it’s sacrilegious. i still have to come up with another blog site for my essays. so i wrote this bloody poem. if you like those two logos, please feel free to email your positive comments to  proudlypinoy@yahoo.com.ph.  just state my contest nickname: ivan roarke. you can also vote for the other entries. there are a lot of really good ones at the contest website: http://www.proudlypinoy.org/.  there are judges for this contest, but they also rely on public opinion. we would appreciate it if you exercise your right to vote. thanks everyone.)

behind
these bars of white

billowing
curtains of now

I sit in
rapt attention gazing

at the
ghosts who left this

room to roam
the summer outside.

listen! a
sharp cry from the boy

who fell
from the young

branches of
that mango tree.

in the
stillmess of the night,

in his
sweltering bedroom

he shall
nurse his broken arm

with the
stoical passion

of
adventurous youth

and the
lingering freshness

of a girl’s
laughter wafting

over the
shimmering rusty

rooftops as
he sat in the

green-dappled
shadows

of the
mango leaves while

straining
his ears to

separate
the joyful sound

from the
tinkle of the

ice cream
cart’s bell

and the
whistling of

the summer
kites and

the singing
of the flowers

in the
butterfly fields.

after the
fall, he will lie

there in
the grass thinking

with amused
wonder whether

there shall
ever be need

for all the
king’s horses

and all the
king’s men,

for pain is
as sweet

as a hot
summer’s love.

the ghosts
will play

outside
until the shadows

throw their
dark limbs

on the
billowing bars,

and then they
will enter

this house
to retire.

who would
have thought

these
tongues of flame

would erupt
into glorious

unintelligible
noises

only our
maker

can
understand?

if you grew
up in the seventies

you would
know

that uncle
chris didn’t die

in an
accident.

he jumped off a jeepney

on its way
to life.

the grass
was brown then

and tall
due to endless days

of sun and
silence.

and there
were only four streets

and four
corners in this town.

the firemen
didn’t have a truck,

only a
hose

when the
only  cinema

burned
down.

we used to
catch dragonflies,

uncle chris
and I,

in the
ponds at the back

of the
warehouse

where they
stacked bottles

of
coca-cola when

it used to
be coke.

you had to
chew a lot of gum

to catch
dragonflies.

you put the
gum on the tips

of stiff
brown grass.

like those cattails with the pussywillow

of the song
the radio would play

under the
sun and the silence.

and if
uncle chris and i

would just
keep still,

the dragonflies
would come

to listen
to the song

and hover
over the pond

and land on
the gum.

uncle chris
and i

would watch
them die

in the jar
on the porch

under the
moon and the silence

until mom
and dad

would come
to fetch me.

after the
jeepney dropped my uncle,

it resumed
its trip to life.

the rains
chased the sun and silence away,

and the
grass turned green.

the streets
became numerous

and the
firetruck would be lost

if not for
the smoke and the noise.

they tore
the warehouse down,

and the
ponds were dried up

for a cinema that could never be set on fire.

and in the
night when nightmares would tire of me

I would dream
of uncle chris with dragonfly wings,

with silent eyes imploring me:

"open the
jar, set me free."

I have a
window

where the
branches sing

in the
evenings when

the wind
tumbles down

in slow
motion

from a
nearby hill.

I have a
gate,

and its
hinges scream

in the
evenings when

the mind
crumbles down

in emotion

while
everything is still.

because
sleep stands

out of
reach

in the
meadow

outside the
window,

I stare at
it

through the
singing branches

until dawn.

because the
gate would wail

in the
night

if I open
it,

I stare at
the street

and the
still

but singing
branches

until dawn.

anne frank was right.
in spite of everything, she still believed
that people are good at heart.
they’re always willing to help
end the misery of
so many godforsaken lives.
a single bullet here,
a knife plunging in there,
a few blows with a rusty pipe.
sometimes that’s all it takes,
effortless, powerful nonetheless.
ah, these simple acts of goodness.
at times they can be ingenious too,
for goodness knows no bounds:
rooms and rooms of liberating gas;
warm, cavernous furnaces;
gigantic, photogenic, luminous clouds;
two babels of singing fire.
but nothing can beat
the bashing in of a skull,
for who knows what evil lurks inside.
it might spring out
and crawl on the ground
and multiply
to put an end
to all this goodness of the heart.

in the
morning

joseph
returned

from the
market

with a
basket

laden with
loaves

and fishes

for
breakfast

to find to
his

utter
devastation

that mary
was

in a state
of shock

and instead
of Jesus

a dog lay
in the manger.

last night I
was waylaid

by the
scent of your hair.

tangled in
tendrils of thoughts of you,

it shot to
the surface

like a
diver gasping for air.

and for a
second or two or three,

you crossed
the raging sea

and stood
here beside me

at the top
of the stairs,

watching
the dining table

surrounded
by solemn chairs.

I could
hear silence breathing

and the
memory receding

as my legs
heeded the call

to resume
the nightly journey

from the
dead tv

to the
empty bedroom.